American Cancer Society marks gains over the past century as it looks forward to stepping up the fight with genetics

Genetic testing, he noted, can identify genetic mutations in some lung cancer tumors that make them susceptible to specially-engineered drugs that use those mutations as a pathway for attack.

The results, Lippman, said, can be stunning.

“Tumors melt away with drugs tailored to target these pathways, and this can happen in tumors that have not responded to several different chemotherapy regimens,” Lippman said.

That sounds great, but it applies only to those whose tumors have the specific genetic mutations and those mutations, the doctor said, are only present in about 16 percent of tumors.

“We still don’t know what’s driving the other 84 percent, and that’s key,” he said.

Carrying the cancer fight forward, he said, will mean finding more targetable mutations and other anomalies that can provide a new path of attack.

There are 33 American Cancer Society-financed projects being conducted in San Diego, by researchers at UC San Diego, San Diego State University, the Salk Institute, the Scripps Research Institute and the Sanford-Burnham Institute.

Wallace noted that it will take much more work to identify all of the genetic weak spots that can lead to a broad victory.

“We still have, for example, about 40,000 women every year that die from breast cancer. We haven’t completely figured out why,” she said.

Lippman said researchers will have their work cut out for them over the next decade in the race to find new weaknesses and develop drugs to exploit them.

“I do think we will have some cures. Certainly, in my lifetime, that’s going to happen. But I think, in the vast majority of cases, we’re going to be successful in converting cancers into chronic diseases,” he said.